The forthcoming article “The nation-state, non-Western empires, and the politics of cultural difference” by Loubna El Amine is summarized by the author below.
In much contemporary political theory, the concept of empire is almost always equated with Western imperialism and colonialism, where non-Western societies were subjected to European domination. But this focus overlooks the fact that, for much of recorded history, vast regions of the world were governed by non-Western precolonial empires. The legacies of these empires continue to shape present-day politics and remain subjects of debate among postcolonial thinkers.
My focus in this article is on these empires’ government of cultural diversity. Examining three cases, the Mughal Empire, the Qing Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, I argue that these empires achieved what I describe as incorporation — a mode of rule that integrated multiple communities without requiring their homogenization. The contrast here is with the modern nation-state, which operates within a rigid majority–minority framework.
I elicit three institutional features that allowed empires to achieve such incorporation. First, their governing structures were plural: a multiplicity of entities with political authority intertwined with a multiplicity of religious, ethnic, and linguistic communities with their own governing structures. Second, relations between the center and the periphery were heterogeneous: different regions and communities were governed according to different legal codes, practices, and degrees of autonomy. The center did not speak in one voice. Third, their authority was non-territorial in a modern sense: boundaries were fluid, overlapping, and not defined by the strict citizen–foreigner divide characteristic of nation-states.
These arrangements made possible ambitious normative ideals of inclusive peace. The Mughals articulated sulh-i kull (“peace toward all”), the Qing invoked the concept of tianxia (“all under Heaven”), and the Ottomans pursued nizam-i alem (“world order”). While these ideals were never fully realized, they were nonetheless made plausible by the imperial framework in a way that they no longer are within the institutional logic of the modern state.
While my aim is not to argue that we should somehow resurrect empires simply because they accommodate cultural difference well, the exploration of non-Western precolonial empires, as historical examples that have not yet been studied by political theorists, aims to contribute, if only indirectly, to the production of new global imaginaries. It is meant to complement what can be broadly identified as cosmopolitan proposals envisioning forms of government beyond the nation-state and, more specifically, to contribute to recent efforts to recover historical alternatives to the state model, primarily federal and other similar arrangements.
About the Author: Loubna El Amine is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. Their research “The nation-state, non-Western empires, and the politics of cultural difference” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.
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